City of Rushford releases statement on $250,000+ wire fraud

Rushford, Minn. (KTTC) – The city of Rushford released a statement to KTTC regarding a wire fraud incident.

The city had an upcoming loan payment owed to the Minnesota Public Facilities Authority (PFA) for infrastructure projects the PFA had helped to finance.

Hayden Stensgard, the city administrator, says that Rushford received an email about the payment from an address mimicking the PFA. The email asked that the city complete the payment via wire transfer, providing instructions.

This is a common way for the state of Minnesota to request a payment, Stensgard states.

Only after sending the complete payment of $252,715.71 did staff realize that the email address was fraudulent. The domain read “@state.rnn.us” instead of “@state.mn.us”.

City staff had also contacted the State at its legitimate email address to confirm the payment. The State responded that it had not received the payment.

Though Rushford made an effort to a request a reversal of payment through the city bank, the bank was unable to reverse it because the money was no longer in the account it was sent to.

Stensgard says that insurance will reimburse the city $50,000 and may receive additional reimbursement following the investigation.

An investigation of possible email breach is currently underway.

Find stories like this and more, in our apps.